The key is using newly available big data to both figure out the eventual cost of continued welfare dependency of various people over decades, while also targeting and tailoring assistance for those individuals most at risk of following that otherwise extremely expensive pattern.

That can necessarily include spending more rather than less money on some individuals initially – in order to avoid the much greater costs longer term.

This is clearly awkward to sell given immediate budget pressures and short-term political cycles, meaning that general welfare spending that is not effective must also be redirected into such “investment”. That’s where the constant talk of providing better services rather than budget cuts becomes so politically valuable.

It also requires being data and results driven only – and in a much simplified system with far fewer overlapping programs.

When it comes to considering any new programs or continuing to fund existing ones, the judgement is made on how effective they are in terms of specific and measurable results.

Some of the preliminary big data has already been provided by PricewaterhouseCoopers.

It will enable what Porter calls the equivalent of “keyhole surgery” – drilling down into groups of a few hundred people in various locations and categories to assess what works best.

The New Zealand government claims considerable success with this more personalised approach.

It is particularly effective in assisting single parents getting part-time work and in focussing on diverting young children and young adults from what their personal background statistics suggest would become long lasting problems for them as well as costs for governments.

Is it too much to ask of a Turnbull government?

Big data, the investment approach and flexible targeted investment – that is the way ahead.

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Comments (17)

deadrightkev

This is the progressive formula to create the illusion that all is well, move along, nothing to see here.

The John Key leadership is predicated on make no waves, deliver substantial social engineering and a pathway to a global government through legislation while balancing the budget at the expense of real tax cuts allowing the people to control more of their own lives and opportunities.

Turnbull even wants to copy the Key formula. How sad is that. His problem will be he does not have the numbers.

freedom101

Bill English has done very well with his “investment approach”. It’s Welfare 2.0. Labour is still stuck with Welfare 1.0, which entails spending ever more money through monolithic union-controlled public agencies.

srylands

“Um, what reforms? Adopting their predecessors’ policies wholesale didn’t seem like much of a reform to me.”
______________________

That is not correct. The reduction in the growth of public consumption expenditure under this Government, compared to the last three years of the Clark government, has been remarkable. That required change. It didn’t just happen.

Anyway, if the current Government has literally “adopted [Labour’s] policies wholesale”, why does The Standard say John Key is the devil who kills babies? What those folk at Lprent’s Blog say is that the current Government has neoliberal murdering policies. they didn’t say that about Helen if I recall correctly.

Manolo

UpandComer

Its always edifying reading milks comments. His slack jawed bafflement and incomprehension to all the big new ideas unfolding around him are a crystalline example of the intellectually bankrupt left in NZ in general. Long may it continue.

soundhill1

srylands your ref: “Costs from the Christchurch earthquakes further added to expenses.”

Haha as the graphs show when the earthquake brought in overseas insurance money that helped things, it did not add to costs overall. That is when public expenditure started reducing.

Public expenditure is needed to keep the economy running, (unless an earthquake happens.)

Labour Govt had been reducing public debt considerably up to 2008 when National hoodwinked the people and borrowed and borrowed, though at a lesser rate after the quake.

National have been very cunning. When people vote them out the debt will be so large that Labour won’t have a hope of promising goodies and staying in. The whole place will be privatised to pay the debt in true John Perkins fashion.

@soundhill. Set out what should have been cut from the budget to avoid borrowing. What welfare or education or health areas would have been pared back to fill bilious of dollar deficits inherited from labour? English borrowed to prop up important social services because of the ship spending profile he inherited in a recession labour made happen before the gfc started.

soundhill1

Dave_1924 (924 comments) says:
August 2nd, 2016 at 5:55 pm

“@soundhill. Set out what should have been cut from the budget to avoid borrowing. What welfare or education or health areas would have been pared back to fill bilious of dollar deficits inherited from labour? English borrowed to prop up important social services because of the ship spending profile he inherited in a recession labour made happen before the gfc started.”

First tell me what in the spending took the public debt up 6 times, (rising at a lesser rate after the quakes.)

Methinks it is money going to the 0.1% corporates. Transmission Gully construction company. Wiki: “In May 2012, Julie Anne Genter, the Greens’ spokeswoman on transport, described the expressway as incurring costs of $1 billion when the official business case benefits were $600 million, in order to ease congestion for an unlikely projected growth of 1500 vehicles.” They are hoping that people won’t share vehicle so they can keep selling fuel and tires at a high rate.

And from John Perkins’ writing it is obvious that loans have been forced on NZ with the intent of buying NZ up cheap when it can not repay. Remember who stopped the Maori Loans attempt.

We are looking at trying to win by exporting. But richer countries than NZ have a lower export to GDP ratio. We need to get on without becoming a banana republic. Get out of subsidisng oil exploration.

Don’t send military “advisers” to the Middle East. Mercenaries, killing for money, is illegal but it seems legal to send “advisers” to persuade youngsters in the Middle East to fight to their deaths. Or to Ukraine to *forcefully* persuade Ukrainians to fight their brothers in Eastern Ukraine when they are trying to escape from that fighting. Seems not much different from religious extremists persuading youngsters to do suicide attacks.

When stuff is privatised and not non-profit then corporates take their cut and everyting gets dearer. The share price of Ryman Health has gone up 4 times in 5 years. Because the government are paying huge subsidies. Nationalise elder care.

srylands

Soundhill your fiscal arithmetic is totally and utterly wrong. I assure you. I am not even going to attempt to refute all of that nonsense.

“Haha as the graphs show when the earthquake brought in overseas insurance money that helped things, it did not add to costs overall. ”

What utter crap. Some of the losses in ChCh were insured. Many were not. Who do you think paid for the red zone acquisitions? The horizontal infrastructure? For god’s sake just read the Crown accounts. Treasury kept a running total of all the Crown’s costs of the rebuild: